Last year, China recorded its slowest economic growth in 28 years. But for leading e-commerce player Pinduoduo, it was boom times, with business up 234% for the year thanks to a largely ignored market—China’s vast rural regions and smaller towns and smaller cities, termed “non-first tier cities”.

Elena L. Botelho, co-author of the best-seller The CEO Next Door and a partner at leadership advisory firm ghSMART, explains why people misunderstand what it takes to get to the corner office Many people aim to climb the corporate ladder even though the responsibilities of a CEO are immense, and their failures can be embarrassingly […]

First coined by two World Bank experts in 2007, the middle-income trap phenomenon—the existence of which is disputed by some economists—describes how growth in developing countries tends to stagnate when gross national income (GNI) per capita rises above a certain level, as higher wages push up production costs. Countries can become “stuck in the middle” as they struggle to compete with low-income newcomers where labor costs are still low, and advanced high-income economies with strong innovation. Since 1960, only 15 countries have escaped the“middle-income trap.” Can China beat the odds?

In addition to the “black swan”, a term which refers to improbable and unforeseeable events, is the “gray rhino”, an expression coined by Michele Wucker to describe highly probable threats that have a potentially high impact yet are often ignored. Why do leaders and decision makers so often fail to address obvious dangers before they spiral out of control? That is the topic of Wucker’s book, The Gray Rhino, which is essential reading for managers, investors, planners, policy makers, and anyone else who wants to understand how to avoid getting trampled in an increasingly changing world.

The WTO is the world’s primary trading system, comprised of 164 member-economies scattered across all of the world’s five continents, and it is obviously in the interests of the world that it works effectively. But growing disputes between China and the Western economies are making the World Trade Organization increasingly dysfunctional. Could the result be a radical overhaul of the global trading system?

Right up until the moment his company imploded, Ofo founder Dai Wei insisted he was building a corporate empire to rival Google.
But the young entrepreneur has now come to resemble a modern-day Ozymandias: all that remains of Ofo’s bike-sharing dream are the battered, unusable yellow cycles still littering China’s streets. The collapse of the Beijing-based startup, which just two years ago was valued at $3 billion, has captivated China over recent months.

Europe is not used to getting its way in trade negotiations with China. But that is exactly what appeared to happen at the EU-China Summit recently. In the days leading up to the meeting in Brussels, it looked like the two sides would fail to agree a joint statement for a third straight year. European Union ambassadors complained of the “slow and difficult” talks with their Chinese counterparts. Just four days ahead of the summit, one diplomat told Euractiv that Brussels and Beijing remained “worlds apart” on several key issues. But all that changed when the Chinese side made a last-minute push to secure a deal.

In his 23 years of executive coaching, Ray Williams, president of Ray Williams Associates in Vancouver, B.C., has advised many executives on how to improve the performance of their teams. He took time out recently for an interview over Skype with CKGSB Knowledge to share his insights on how to make your team more productive, whether they work together in one room or are scattered all over the world.

October 27 of 2018 was supposed to be a historic day for China’s growing aerospace industry. Landspace, a Beijing-based startup, was set to become the first private Chinese firm to launch a rocket into outer space. Then, at 6:40 pm, a fault occurred. Soon after, Landspace declared the mission a failure. A few weeks later, SpaceX completed its 20th successful launch of 2018. It is unfair to draw sweeping conclusions based on the performance of just two companies, but it does serve as a reminder of how far China has to go before it rivals the US as the world’s leading technological power.

Many—maybe even most—business teams are dysfunctional. Whether your teammates are co-founders of a startup or the C-suite of a Fortune 500 company, the evidence suggests you are probably not working together as productively as you might. Outsized egos and mis-sized groups are the most frequently cited cause of team dysfunction, but they aren’t the only problem.

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Information, analysis, and interviews about the Chinese economy and doing business in China, from the people who know it best. Presented by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, China's leading business school.